


And So You Walk

by trascendenza



Category: Northern Exposure
Genre: Episode: s06e12 Mi Casa Su Casa, F/M, layers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-26
Updated: 2008-07-26
Packaged: 2017-10-05 13:44:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trascendenza/pseuds/trascendenza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on 6x12, Mi Casa, Su Casa. <em>He thinks of her face: placid, calm, accepting.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	And So You Walk

_You will_, she said. Those words make the hard days just a bit easier, lighten his footsteps when they sink into the snow. _You will._ He exhales and feels feathers tickling his forehead.

*

He wasn't sure what it was about her—about what she gave him—that affected him so much. Equilibrium had been his, a mere hairsbreadth away, and with every progressive stroke of the flat of his knife down a hide, he'd felt closer. So close he could have tasted it, felt it. Like he'd almost been ready to know it.

He joked about Raven sending her, but a part of him wondered. Wondered if she was a test, a messenger, a sign of his failure.

All his other visitors had only served to ground him deeper into his purpose—Ed, so curious and wide-eyed; Phil, green and young as he'd once been, eager to tame the un-tameable Cicely; Maggie, so worried that he was lost, not able to see that for the first time, he was truly _finding_.

He'd let go of everything; everything he'd known, everything he'd thought he'd known. He'd surrendered himself over to wind and water and fire, to open space and rivers and mountains. He'd gone through the crucible and emerged to tell the tale, found the strength to dive in deeper.

*

And, yet—Marilyn.

*

Since her visit, he's struggled. He's spent nights staring at the walls of his home, damning them as a prison, has aimlessly wandered in the woods at three in morning, shouting at random trees and talking to himself about baseball scores and the best way to hail a taxi. He's damned every god and goddess in the indigenous pantheon, snarled at children, and cried desperately, curled up in his furs, inconsolable howling with a sorrow that has absolutely no explanation. He has fallen into trance-like states of meditation that have lasted for days without the slightest intent to do so; he carved five perfectly circular bowls while in such a state without the slightest memory of how he accomplished such a feat. He's felt possessed and on the verge of insanity since they parted ways.

And strangely free.

*

For the first time in his life, Joel Fleischman has stopped trying.

*

When had he ever cared what she thought of him? Why was _she_ the one he felt the burning need to prove himself to, after all this?

He runs his fingers over the leather that protects his gift. What lies inside speaks volumes more than the years' worth of arguments he and Maggie had shared; more than the declarations of love he'd made to Elaine back in New York. More than anything.

He thinks of her face: placid, calm, accepting. Untouchable, yet always open to him.

_Ah._

He thinks of her face and walks out into the snow. His feet hardly touch. _I will_, he thinks, but this time he's thinking of a different accolade he'll deserve, a different silence he'll foster. One that means long hours sitting and sharing meals with the one person with whom he's never had to speak, never had to push.

*

Somewhere between a hazy dawn and a fire red sunset, Joel realizes that Marilyn is no test, no message, no teacher. She is everything that she has ever given him: a gift, a promise, an acceptance and a knowing that no matter where he is, he's on his way home.


End file.
